hear:here

Open the app, put in headphones, walk. As you move through the space, sounds recorded by other participants emerge from the spots where they were captured — spatialized, place-bound, shifting as you move closer or further away. Switch to soundmaking mode to record your own sounds and shape them with effects; they are placed on the map where you stand, and will be heard by whoever passes through after you. hear:here draws from the traditions of soundwalking and GPS audio art, but dissolves the distinction between artist and audience. There is no single composer. The work is a platform for collective sonic inscription — a participatory layer of urban sound design, open to anyone moving through. Where the headphone has characteristically privatized our experience of the city, enclosing each listener in a personal soundtrack, hear:here proposes a reversal: a hybrid space in which physical movement and networked contribution jointly constitute the experience of place.